The Chamberlain School Board this week refused to allow a tribal honor song to be played at high school graduation. / Elisha Page / Argus Leader

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The Chamberlain School Board’s refusal to allow a tribal honoring song at high school graduation Sunday has sparked a call from Crow Creek Sioux Tribe Chairman Brandon Sazue for an economic boycott of the city, the withdrawal of millions of dollars of tribal funds from a bank that declined to condemn the district, and a demand for Chamberlain High School to return an eagle feather staff.

Sazue said the board’s 6-1 vote Wednesday night showed a lack of respect for tribal culture.

In the latest escalation of the dispute between the school district and the tribe, Chamberlain Superintendent Debra Johnson said the district would not give up the staff.

“We have been made aware of that request,” she says. “In talking to Native Americans in our community, the staff was made to honor our students that we have in the district. By giving it away we would be abandoning that commitment.”

Sazue’s response: “Who the hell do they think they are?”

Johnson said the staff was given to the district about seven years ago, before she became superintendent, and she does not know who presented it. Similarly, Sazue said he doesn’t know who gave the staff to the district. But the Crow Creek tribe wants to take custody of it until tribal officials can identify the previous owner.

“As a tribal leader of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, I think they no longer deserve it,” he said.

Tribal officials’ next move will be to contact spiritual leaders to see whether they have influence in gaining control of the staff, according to the chairman.

Sazue also said he has spoken with four of six tribal council members who back his proposal to withdraw tribal money from Wells Fargo Bank, which declined to take the tribe’s side in the dispute.

“We have got millions going in there from our casino, housing, the school and tribe,” he said. The tribe also banks with Great Western and First Dakota National Bank and could readily transfer funds to those institutions, said Sazue.

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Staci Schiller, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, said bank leaders are puzzled why they have been drawn into the dispute.

“We’re a leading lender to tribal nations,” she said, but “this isn’t our issue. We shouldn’t be part of the story. This is an issue between the school board and the tribe. Our role as a financial services company is to provide financial services, not get in between two parties in a dispute.”

As for Sazue’s threat to withdraw tribal money from the bank, she said, “The tribe needs to do what is certainly best for them.”

Sazue said he already has begun to boycott businesses in Chamberlain and is urging the tribe and individual tribal members to do the same.

“I love Chamberlain. I went to school there. I shop there. But right now I’m boycotting it, because of the school board’s decision.

“How do you make change? You make change by action. I will boycott until they let our kids have an honor song,” he said.

The school district and tribal leaders, including Sazue, clashed when the Chamberlain School Board early this month turned down a request from a group of high school seniors to allow a drum group to perform an honoring song for graduates during Sunday’s commencement. Sazue said the song is a tribe’s way of honoring all Chamberlain’s graduates, Indians and non-Indians alike.

“We want to show our respect, our humility to the good kids of Chamberlain to show together they can do many things by accomplishing graduation,” he said.

School: Feathering ceremony is enough

School Board President Rebecca Reimer could not be reached for comment Thursday. However, Johnson said the board’s resistance rose in part from concerns that non-Indian students who signed the petition felt they had to do so or face allegations of racial prejudice. About 30 percent of Chamberlain High School students are Native American.

District officials reached out to other school districts whose graduation events feature feathering ceremonies and honoring songs to learn their protocol. What they largely found, Johnson said, is those districts have one or the other; Chamberlain is feeling its way this year by having a feathering ceremony for the first time.

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“It’s something we wanted to see and follow through with to see how our students and families were with that. What were their thoughts as they were going through that?” she said.

Sazue counters that a feathering ceremony and honoring song are part of the same event. “You have to do it at the same time. It doesn’t take very long,” he said.

As it stands, a drum group will set up outside the school and perform the honoring song for Chamberlain’s new graduates as they leave the commencement ceremony, Chamberlain Police Chief Joe Hutmacher said. He does not anticipate any problems.

“I talked to the organizers. They told me they just plan to play an honor song as the graduates come out of the building,” he said.

Sazue is calling on school district leaders to meet with the tribal council at the earliest opportunity to talk through the controversy.

“We haven’t talked to each other to set anything up. If we’re going to do that it will be in the future,” Johnson said, adding that “we always look to cooperate and work together.”

To this point, relations between the school district and tribal members largely had been amiable and at times downright collegial, say both the tribal chairman and the school superintendent.

“We do have activities where we try to involve families and students,” Johnson said. School officials regularly go to Crow Creek to meet with parents who send their children to Chamberlain schools, she said.

“We get positive feedback from parents who send their children to the district.”

But Sazue insists that unless the sides get together to resolve it, the unanticipated battle over the honoring song could harm relations between the school district and the Crow Creek and Lower Brule Sioux Tribes.